Indonesia smoke haze shrouds Malaysian cities

Jun 16, 2013

Haze coversPetronas Twin Towers (L) and KL Tower (R) in Kuala Lumpur on June 16, 2013. Malaysia was shrouded with smoky haze attributed to mainly fires burning on the Indonesian island of Sumatra causing "unhealthy" levels of pollution in six areas.

Malaysia was Sunday shrouded with haze from forest fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra causing "unhealthy" levels of pollution in six areas.

Haze is an annual problem during the monsoon season from May to September as winds blow the smoke across the Malacca Strait to Malaysia.

Environment Department director general Halimah Hassan said they had detected 46 hotspots in Sumatra via satellite.

The Air Pollutant Index (API) showed unhealthy levels of between 101 and 129 in six areas on Sunday morning, including two places in Malacca state along with Port Dickson and the country's largest port, Port Klang.

In the capital Kuala Lumpur the skies were hazy with air pollution readings at 92, just below the unhealthy threshold.

A level of 101-200 is considered unhealthy, while 51-100 is moderate.

Halimah in a statement late Saturday attributed the haze to the westerly monsoon season during which winds blow the smoke towards Malaysia.

Haze, mostly caused by fires in Indonesia, builds up during the dry season, affecting tourism and contributing to health problems across the region.

Indonesia's government has outlawed land-clearing by fire but weak law enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.

The haze hit its worst level in 1997-1998, costing the Southeast Asian region an estimated $9 billion by disrupting air travel and other business activities.

Dozens of red hot spots cluster at the tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. To the south, fires also speckle the neck of the Yucatan, Guatemala, and Belize. Each hot spot, which appears as a red mark, is an ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured multiple plumes of smoke from agricultural fires and industrial pollution in China. The smoke and haze stretches from Inner Mongolia, located north of Beijing, south and west ...

Yosemite National Park is bracing for its driest year on record, with visitor bureaus downplaying the allure of the park's most famous waterfall and instead touting the park as a destination for hiking, bicycling and photography.

A new stream-based monitoring system recently discovered high levels of methane in a Pennsylvania stream near the site of a reported Marcellus shale gas well leak, according to researchers at Penn State and the U.S. Geological ...

A team led by Washington State University researchers has found that methane emissions from local natural gas distribution systems in cities and towns throughout the U.S. have decreased in the past 20 years ...

In the first-of-its-kind study of the environmental effects of hydropeaking, that is releasing water at hydropower dams to meet peak daily electricity demand, two University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers ...